Yes sorcerers are not viable healers for tank assassins since 1.3, mercenary and operatives (well geared) will do better. We changed healers and we noticed a difference, although survivabilty of assassins went from being par with a birdie here and there to bogey on almost all holes and some par! =-) lol

Thanks everyone for the replies, I will change some stats and see how that goes. We are going in denova once more and changing a healer that should make a difference As for harnessed darkness, if you look in the skill tree, it mentions that it heals for 2% and stacks 3 times, so I counted 6% not 8%, maiking it a 50% decrease from 12%, if the numbers in the game are correct. I will verify the exact amount of heal that it procs for each tick and bring you back the numbers.

you are correct as soon as we have 1 stack we call it for the tank to pull threat off me, but in a perfect world there is no pauverty, everyone has food, everyone has money, and it's always sunny except in the sahara desert where it rains all the time! lol =-) Just meaining that fights don't always go the way you plan them, if you're lucky sometimes we don't need to switch tanks and marks are ideal for dps, that was not the case for us last night, so what then? Tank assassins have no way to survive a gore with one stack? seems uncalled for Get back to us after you've been in there I like to have different views. please post your stats and gear

Yes I do aknowledge what Bioware's statement is all about; In reality, Shadow/Assassin tanks were slightly over-performing prior to Game Update 1.3 Notice how bioware mentions slightly, but being the only tank with light armor gear, we have to take into consideration that the reduction they applied came from 3 directions; armor, self-healing from stance, and self-healing from harnessed darkness, this is not a slight reduction in survivability. For example, I just finished leveling up a powertech tank to compare, here are his stats: 19122 health points 7672 armor rating 50.53% damage reduction 16.22 defense rating 53.28 shield rating 35.72 absorb rating he's a fresh lv 50 with only lv 50 gear and even some lv 46 mods. we can see that even though the health points, defense rating are lower, the armor rating, damage reduction and shield rating for his level of gear are way superior to those of my well geared assassin. As for tanking zorn or toth, you still have to switch them at one point. Stormcaller is pretty basic tanking as well, I'd like to know how you managed with kephess. Have you tanked nightmare pilgrim? What is your gear like? what are your stats? If you or anyone else does not feel challenged by these reductions I am very happy for you all and hope you keep enjoying the game, but don't expect clearing other content higher then story mode Explosive conflict, and you better have some very well geared healers that are focused on their job, I noticed that from now on you are not allowed any mystakes. Thanks for your input

We tank TFTS with one stack, but sometimes fights are not perfect and it gets to 2 stacks, but even at one stack my assassin gets wacked and requires 2 healers to bring him back up, even if assassins we're performing over the norm, now they are below the norm. Thank for your input

Hello everyone I am bringing some fresh content to the argument that the nerf applied to shadow/assassin tanks was overkill. Notice that as tanks we are the only ones that have a damage output reduction of 5% while in tank spec (dark charge). Powertechs have an increase in damage while ion gas cylinder is active. I myself have an assassin tank which is my main character from pre-launch. I have tanked; -hard mode flashpoints -story mode and hard mode operations (eternity vault, karragar's palace) -story mode Explosive conflict -toth and zorn from EC HM -nightmare pilgrim all of this pre 1.3 Since 1.3 went live I have tanked (tried) tanking story mode Explosive conflict and my healers noticed that I do need much more healing then before, and because of this nerf we were not able to kill kephess as I would die continually while tanking him. We also went for the weekly last night, Nightmare Pïlgrim was our target and after 3 hours of failed wiping we called it, healers were having difficulty keeping me up while I tanked nightmare pilgrim, when I switched to the dog (shining stars) if 1 or 2 gore did not get interrupted and I had 2 stacks I would die which I did twice for every fight, at 1 stack the other tank would have to take him right away but still I would take more damage and the healers could not catch up since I'm not the only one that needs healing, at one point I needed 2 healers while tanking nightmare pilgrim and I was rarely at 100% health. Here is a list of my gear followed by the stats that it gives me with a build of 39 darkness and 2 madness. Black hole duelist's mk-1 module-----augmented with shield Black hole duelist's mk-1 implant-----augmented with shield Black hole duelist's mk-1 implant-----augmented with shield Rakata survivor's bracers Rakata relic of shrouded crusader-----augmented with endurance Campaign relic of shield amplification-----augmented with shield Custom built double bladed saber (lv 58 mods+41 endurance crystal)-----augmented with endurance Columi survivor's headgear Anointed zeyd-cloth vestments (lv 58 mods)-----augmented with endurance Columi survivor's handwraps 4 set bonus (black hole lv 61 mods)-----augmented with shield Black hole duelist's mk-1 waistwrap-----augmented with shield Rakata survivor's legwraps-----augmented with shield Rakata survivor's boots Battlemaster survivor's shield generator-----augmented with shield Unbuffed stats: 22740 health points 5920 armor rating 39.41% damage reduction 25.83% defense rating 45.66 / 65.66% shield rating (dark ward) 45.66% absorb rating 1331 willpower 93.54% melee accuracy We actually can see here that my armor rating is incredibly low for a tank, by reducing armor rating bioware has reduced my damage reduction well below 40%. As for my shield rating, I can say that during end-game content the shield does not absorb as much as it should and not as often as it should, the mechanics of it are not accurate and if Bioware would spend more time on the public test servers before lauching an update they would of realized it. My melee accuracy has dropped to 93.54% because of gear stats changes making my lightsaber attacks hit even less therefor my 50% chance of reduced self-healing, procs even less and heals even less then before 1.3. Discharge which applies my dark charge does not hit up to 5 nearby ennemies anymore, it hits only 3 and I've tested this many times, therefor does not apply the debuff nor the 50% chance of applying reduced self-healing. Harnessed darkness stacks 3 times for 2% at each stack for a grand total of 6% for every time you have a chance to cast it which you don't have the opportunity now in pve tanking more then once every 45 seconds or more. Disjunction which supposedly removes all movements impairing effects upon activation never worked for my assassin since launch and I have posted many tickets to this matter. Now to all of you who say it is not noticeable, that we will forget about it in a week, clearly you missed the point of where shadow/assassin tank is now obsolete for any end-game content. These reductions also make pvp in tank spec with pvp tank gear useless since we die easily without doing any damage. I pvp in tank spec with tank gear and I get 2 shot by marauders..how is that possible? We have no survivability even as tanks. I understand that the main issue Bioware was trying to correct was for pvp players to use a tank spec with the self-healing capabilities and wear pvp dps gear to make the self healing proc even more. Here are my suggestions to correct the issue without penalizing all players who love and enjoy shadow-assassin tanks. -revert dark charge armor buff to 150% or at least minimum of 140% -increase self-healing capabilities 20% to 25% lowering it actually 25% to 30% pre 1.3 -increase harnessed darkness healing to 8% total -decrease armor rating provided by pvp dps gear (armor rating of pvp armoring mods, tank armoring included) With these changes you still reduced survivability of shadow/assassins overall, without leaving a feeling of overkill nerf for PVE players and preventing pvp players from over exploiting the mechanics of self-healing. My subscription expires in July, I will not be renewing my account since these changes made my main character unplayable and unusable for any end-game content. If bioware would agree to refund all commendations purchased for Black hole tank gear as well as war hero tank gear to allow us the possiblity of purchasing dps gear instead, I personally might agree to keep playing and I'm sure that others would follow and agree. We did not spend all this time gearing and working on our shadow/assassin tank to just see it become garbage, since I will be honest about it shadow/assassin tanks are useless to pve/pvp and to level up, the darkness spec is better forgotten until new changes are applied that do not diminish the capabilities of surviving some attacks. If Bioware's goal was to decrease the shadow/assassin survivability targets, this means they meant for them to be made of paper and not be a good class to play. If anyone has any solid and concrete data to provide for or against all of the above please reply and I shall verify your information. Thank you

Hello everyone I am bringing some fresh content to the argument that the nerf applied to shadow/assassin tanks was overkill. Notice that as tanks we are the only ones that have a damage reduction of 5% while in tank spec (dark charge). Powertechs have an increase in damage while ion gas cylinder is active. I myself have an assassin tank which is my main character from pre-launch. I have tanked; -hard mode flashpoints -story mode and hard mode operations (eternity vault, karragar's palace) -story mode Explosive conflict -toth and zorn from EC HM -nightmare pilgrim all of this pre 1.3 Since 1.3 went live I have tanked (tried) tanking story mode Explosive conflict and my healers noticed that I do need much more healing then before, and because of this nerf we were not able to kill kephess as I would die continually while tanking him. We also went for the weekly last night, Nightmare Pïlgrim was our target and after 3 hours of failed wiping we called it, healers were having difficulty keeping me up while I tanked nightmare pilgrim, when I switched to the dog (shining stars) if 1 or 2 gore did not get interrupted and I had 2 stacks I would die which I did twice for every fight, at 1 stack the other tank would have to take him right away but still I would take more damage and the healers could not catch up since I'm not the only one that needs healing, at one point I needed 2 healers while tanking nightmare pilgrim and I was rarely at 100% health. Here is a list of my gear followed by the stats that it gives me with a build of 39 darkness and 2 madness. Black hole duelist's mk-1 module-----augmented with shield Black hole duelist's mk-1 implant-----augmented with shield Black hole duelist's mk-1 implant-----augmented with shield Rakata survivor's bracers Rakata relic of shrouded crusader-----augmented with endurance Campaign relic of shield amplification-----augmented with shield Custom built double bladed saber (lv 58 mods+41 endurance crystal)-----augmented with endurance Columi survivor's headgear Anointed zeyd-cloth vestments (lv 58 mods)-----augmented with endurance Columi survivor's handwraps 4 set bonus (black hole lv 61 mods)-----augmented with shield Black hole duelist's mk-1 waistwrap-----augmented with shield Rakata survivor's legwraps-----augmented with shield Rakata survivor's boots Battlemaster survivor's shield generator-----augmented with shield Unbuffed stats: 22740 health points 5920 armor rating 39.41% damage reduction 25.83% defense rating 45.66 / 65.66% shield rating (dark ward) 45.66% absorb rating 1331 willpower 93.54% melee accuracy We actually can see here that my armor rating is incredibly low for a tank, by reducing armor rating bioware has reduced my damage reduction well below 40%. As for my shield rating, I can say that during end-game content the shield does not absorb as much as it should and not as often as it should, the mechanics of it are not accurate and if Bioware would spend more time on the public test servers before lauching an update they would of realized it. My melee accuracy has dropped to 93.54% because of gear stats changes making my lightsaber attacks hit even less therefor my 50% chance of reduced self-healing, procs even less and heals even less then before 1.3. Discharge which applies my dark charge does not hit up to 5 nearby ennemies anymore, it hits only 3 and I've tested this many times, therefor does not apply the debuff nor the 50% chance of applying reduced self-healing. Harnessed darkness stacks 3 times for 2% at each stack for a grand total of 6% for every time you have a chance to cast it which you don't have the opportunity now in pve tanking more then once every 45 seconds or more. Disjunction which supposedly removes all movements impairing effects upon activation never worked for my assassin since launch and I have posted many tickets to this matter. Now to all of you who say it is not noticeable, that we will forget about it in a week, clearly you missed the point of where shadow/assassin tank is now obsolete for any end-game content. These reductions also make pvp in tank spec with pvp tank gear useless since we die easily without doing any damage. I pvp in tank spec with tank gear and I get 2 shot by marauders..how is that possible? We have no survivability even as tanks. I understand that the main issue Bioware was trying to correct was for pvp players to use a tank spec with the self-healing capabilities and wear pvp dps gear to make the self healing proc even more. Here are my suggestions to correct the issue without penalizing all players who love and enjoy shadow-assassin tanks. -revert dark charge armor buff to 150% or at least minimum of 140% -increase self-healing capabilities 20% to 25% lowering it actually 25% to 30% pre 1.3 -increase harnessed darkness healing to 8% total -decrease armor rating provided by pvp dps gear (armor rating of pvp armoring mods, tank armoring included) With these changes you still reduced survivability of shadow/assassins overall, without leaving a feeling of overkill nerf for PVE players and preventing pvp players from over exploiting the mechanics of self-healing. My subscription expires in July, I will not be renewing my account since these changes made my main character unplayable and unusable for any end-game content. If bioware would agree to refund all commendations purchased for Black hole tank gear as well as war hero tank gear to allow us the possiblity of purchasing dps gear instead, I personally might agree to keep playing and I'm sure that others would follow and agree. We did not spend all this time gearing and working on our shadow/assassin tank to just see it become garbage, since I will be honest about it shadow/assassin tanks are useless to pve/pvp and to level up, the darkness spec is better forgotten until new changes are applied that do not diminish the capabilities of surviving some attacks. If Bioware's goal was to decrease the shadow/assassin survivability targets, this means they meant for them to be made of paper and not be a good class to play. If anyone has any solid and concrete data to provide for or against all of the above please reply and I shall verify your information. Thank you

I am sorry but if I was a share holder of Bioware and of Lucasarts and that I was reading all the forums and comments and the PTS, about class changes, I would want someone's head on a stick, who is making the decisions around here? BW and LA have invested an incredible amount of ressources into this game and it still has much returns to yield, which it hasn't at the moment. So tell me again why are we pushing 1.3 when it is not ready? Why are we making so many changes to classes & characters that do not need and not making some where needed? Why are we not using the feedbacks of the community if this is supposed to be our game? I've heard these exact words in a BW video!! Watch where you step because you might end up losing more on the long run then just filling in the numbers for this summer. You should focus on building a solid game ready for august not pushing a buggy update with 1.3 which will aggravate even more the community then it already is. I am far from impressed by this long awaited game 1 word : COMMUNICATION 2 ways : TALK and LISTEN You better have people ready to answer, treat (and most of all FIX) all the tickets you will be getting with 1.3. I know I will not be gentle with your staff!! If you can't deliver a game of quality for which we are all giving you money to play, don't use your present customers as feedback pools to slowly improve your incomplete work. If you want testers pay us or let us play free and give us for our money's worth, you do not realize how much time and how many items were lost because of your bugs and I am almost sure none of these playes have been compensated for their loss and with all the problems 1.3 will bring that yet again we will lose much without being compensated in return for all our frustrations.

I have noticed that as my gear on my tankassin gets better, I start stacking more on defensive abilities, shield rating and absorb. But in exchange I'm losing accuracy, which is now at 90%, yes my melee accuracy is at 90%, which means my lightsaber attacks won't hit as much and will probably miss sometimes, therefor making my dark charge nerf even more noticeable in 1.3. Since at this moment my lightsaber attacks have a 50% chance to drain life, well now with my accuracy reduced, my lightsaber attacks don't always hit, did BIOWARE forsee this change in stats? BIOWARE lowers accuracy rating, dark charge armor, dark charge self-healing, simple math here, too much nerfs!!!!! I have noticed that while I wear my pvp war hero gear, that my tankassin does have more armor then in PVE gear, but less of the other defensive stats. If your idea is basically nerfing assassins for pvp, you should just lower the armor stats provided from their pvp gear, that should balance out the whole problems around pvp and tankassins while leaving pve untouched.

We could talk and discuss many topics for which many of us agree to be displeased and there is a lot discussion from both sides. It would be interesting to feel and test these changes on the public test server ourselves, how is the public test server doing at the moment?

I have seen some very interesting posts especially about tank assassins I have an other post at #271 I wanted to add, last night I went and tanked nightmare pilgrim, we were 3 tanks, 1 juggernaut, 1 powertech and 1 assassin, and guess what, I was the one taking more damge then the others, I was the one who died first when we wiped. We did manage to kill him, but everytime there was a critical hit or cleave or gore if my cds were not up I would almost get one shot if it were not for healers. I also went and tanked hardmode denova, and then again the bosses hit really hard, my selfhealing ability does not help me much there and any armor reduction would simply be fatal to assassins for end content tanking. Before 1.2 tanking was a pain for flashpoints and operations until I got my stats balanced and had to work hard on my assassin, then at 1.2 assassins became a good tanking class that is par with other tanks. I have a powertech tank and I notice a difference in survivability concerning major cleaves and critical hits from bosses, we're not talking about tanking your trash during dailys because anyone can do their dailys. Now that people enjoy the assassin you want to kill us? I'd say leave the assassin as is, from what I've read the tanking classes are just fine the way they are, they each have their strenght and weaknesses that complement each other. Why make threat a 100%, so now tanking will be so easy that you do not need to generate threat?, dps will just unload with no regard, we are going towards a basic tank and spank system, boring, boring, boring, the game had somewhat of a challenge now you are dumbing it down, I have no problems with threat as long as I get a few seconds on the boss to pull wither and my chock before anyone touches him, and all the other tanks I've been with don't have threat problems...so tell me again why all these changes...who have you been talking too? I've been in beta tests pre-launch, I even had early access to the game and have been playing since. I think you have to work on dps and healing classes from what I've seen, sorcerers, mercenaries, marauders. I hope you take into consideration how people are going to be displeased with these changes and how these changes will affect the number of subscription lost to 1.3, as a good business man how can you justify losing customers?

I really disagree with some of the changes made in 1.3 concerning tank assassins, I started playing as a tank assassin in pre-launch, leveled up as a tank assassin and still play operations and pvp, it was a pain to go do flashpoints and try to get properly geared. I do not understand why you are nerfing the tank assassin, classes cannot be balanced as the abilities; survivability, damage all depend of the gear and the stats we put on our character. It also depends if you went and got all the datacrons which gave me a nice willpower and endurance and strenght buff on my stats.... TAKE EVERY FACTOR INTO CONSIDERATION; -the pc used by the player -key bindings configuration -gamer mouse or keyboard used -internet connection -player IQ or reflex responsivness -number of hours played on character -profession skill: biochem, artifice, etc... each has a different buff or bonus The healing generated by Combat Technique/Dark Charge has been reduced by approximately 50%. 50% reduction??? are you mad that is huge...we do not heal ourselves that much since our rotation as tank does not allow us to be striking with our lightsaber at every turn. The ability is specific, dark charge grants my lightsaber attacks 50% chance to drain a minimal amount of life! 50% chance...this means not at every attack..and as I said before I can't use my lightsaber attacks at every turn in my tank rotation. The healing generated by Harnessed Shadows/Harnessed Darkness has been reduced to 8% in total (down from 12% in total). Again 4% reduction for harnessed darkness which is a backup heal for when you reach 3 stacks, it heals for not much and I have 24k hp in operations so that would be roughly a maximum 3000hp heal every 30 seconds over a 3 seconds casting time and that is if we have time to cast it! It heals for 3% of max health for every tick of lighning which is a 3 seconds cast not many ticks there. Some fights in operations or even in pvp do not allow you such luxury, and to be very useful, it is best to use it when recklessness and overcharge saber is up., which again have longer cooldowns. I say it again this ability is a small backup healing ability. The armor provided by Combat Technique/Dark Charge has been reduced to +115% (down from 150%). There we go again, reduce the armor provided by dark charge stance to the light armor wearer, what an insult this is...35% reduction....read again light armor not heavy armor...light armor...light!!!! I have full rakata gear and I only have 6782 armor rating...that's not much...take some more away what crap! Juggernauts and powertechs have heavy armor, thus more armor rating then assassins, they have more defense rating which in return grants them more range/melee-dodge/deflect...meaning they don't get hit by melee or range more often...which in comparison a tank assassin does get hit almost everytime by range and melee, and if you don't have high enough shield rating you won't shield and absorb damage that often. If you have 50% shield rating and 50% absorb rating, well 50% of attacks will be absorbed at 50%....what happens to the 50% of when you can't shield and absorb attacks? you'll die since assassins won't have enough armor nor healing capabilities. And one thing that is funny is that tankassins have wither and discharge and mass mind control and lacerate, these abilities are great to aoe tank multiple adds, and with changes in 1.3 tell us how are we going to do that now? We should just wear paper instead, we could at least do some nice drawings on it because lets be straight the inquisitor gear is ugly with cone shoulders and fishtails and bullhorns. I am sorry but bioware is putting forth some MAJOR NERF on tank assassins, nerfs that do not seem like they are destined for operations or flashpoints, but more over for pvp, and again pvp abilities all depend of the gear and expertise and how well you play your character, if my assassin is specced as tank and has full battle master and war hero TANK gear with well over 1100k expertise, you will have much difficulty killing me, but it does not mean I do lots of damage in return. I say again I wear PVP TANK GEAR, for what purpose? to have survivability in pvp, not to do damage!!!! If I am a good player and know how to play my class should we nerf my pc? my graphics card? my brain, my reflexes? I have read in other posts people talking about assassins tank having stealth and ccs, wow!!! can you tank while stealthed? do you call electrocute and spike which are 2 seconds cc...crowd control, and by the way they do not apply to elites and champions. a 8second whirlwind is not a big crowd control either. -juggernauts have crowd controls also (force choke), as well as a charge that assassins dont have -powertechs have crowd controls, charges and pull in tank spec as well I also have a powertech tank, he has much more survivability then my assassin and deals much more damage then my assassin...I am sorry but bioware do your homework or risk losing all tank assassins all over since they will become useless, risk losing players like me also since I love playing my assassin more then my other characters. I also do lots of pvp with my tank assassin and somehow marauders are very difficult to be killed and manage to kill me very easily... have you ever gone against a gunslinger or operative? they seem to have an infinite number of stuns? so do your homework people...don't listen to people crying who don't know how to play the game. What are you priorityzing in swtor PVE or PVP? if you want to go either way have pvp servers affected by some of the changes you wish to balance for pvp, and have pve servers only be affected by changes made for pve. MAKE IT FAIR FOR EVERYONE!!! Don't kill your PVE players with such changes to accomodate some, and I say only SOME of your PVP cryers. I took quite some time to understand my stats on my assassin, I balanced my stats for defense not damage and still juggernauts and powertechs tanks have more survivability then assassins on equal gear. We have different abilities and that is what is fun to complement each other, now you're just going to make tankassins completely useless for all your new content. I also want to point out that before nerfing the assassin I posted tickets many times about disjunction in the tank tree not functionning and it was never fixed so get your priorities straight before you nerf make sure everything works. a frustrated tankassin who might quit the game because of bad game management

Thx for the replies who wants to stay level 7 or level 15 for a long time? Would you spend 5 000 creds for a lv 7 crystal? Would you spend 10 000 creds for a lv 15 crystal? Would you spend 20 000 creds for a lv 23 crystal? I do sell low level items for a small fee which does not make it worth the time, am I or anybody else spend all their time putting 100s of low level items on the gtn every 2 day to sell only 2 or 3? come on I do have lots of offhand recipes, shields generators, etc... and they do not sell easily, you better be willing to hang on to them for a while before you get rid of them This all depends of your server My mentality is 1st if I can make much more money doing my dailys then there is something wrong with my profession 2nd if my high end craftables are not as good as certain drops then what is the point in having high end craftables 3rd if a lv 50 can just go out and buy stuff that I can craft why do I craft them? I should just abandon and get biochem since all the good buffs and recipe drops are mostly biochem. If anybody has any VALUABLE insights then go ahead, anyhow we'll see what the next big patch will have in store for us. Until then I'm only going to do some dailys and not waste my time with my artifice

I just noticed the changes made in the patch this week, my only source of revenue was the +33 magenta crystal but now this becomes absolete. offhands drop from instances so can't sell any enhancements and hilts can easily be bought with daily commendations so here again can't sell any crystals now are worth nothing so can't sell any In fact artifice is pretty much useless for making creds at this point compared to biochem There is still no offhand for tank assasins in the list of wieldables Every item that can be crafted is easily outdated or made obsolete They should immediately remove the crystal vendor and let artifice craft them Hey why not add a vendor that sells high end stims, buffs, cunsummables? lol You should also add artifice crafting recipes as a list of drops from instances such as EV and KP